This application relates to the electronic publishing of documents and, more particularly, to the creation of documents on the World Wide Web.
The now-famous World Wide Web ("the Web") is built around a network of "server" computers which exchange requests and data from each other using the hypertext transfer protocol ("http"). Using any of the numerous, commercially available "browser" programs, a user who establishes a communications link with any Web server of the network can access documents available from other Web servers on the network by submitting an appropriate http request. A typical http request will reference a document by its unique Uniform Resource Locator ("URL"). A document's URL includes an identification of the Web server hosting that document, so that an http request for access to the document can be routed to the appropriate Web server for handling. Web documents can also be linked graphically to each other.
The user of a "browser" program can simply "point and click" on a graphical hypertext link displayed in one accessed document. The point and click action will result in the browser or its associated server transmitting an http request containing the URL of the desired document over the Web. As a result, a new document will be displayed. Thus, the user can easily "browse" through an almost infinite number of linked documents, using only the point and click action of a mouse.
In light of the remarkable and growing popularity of the Web among millions of users, an important challenge for technologists is to provide convenient, computer-based tools to assist users in the process of "publishing" (making available) their own content on the Web.
In order to publish a document on the Web, several things must be taken care of. First, a Web document's internal contents must conform to certain standard formats that are uniformly intelligible to the servers and browsers of the Web. Thus, on the Web, document contents are typically formatted in ASCII text, augmented by code in hypertext mark-up language ("html") specifying graphical layout information such as the previously mentioned graphical, hypertextual links to related documents on the Web.
Another requirement, of course, is that the document be made available to a local Web server, i.e., the document must be stored in a file system to which a Web server has access. In addition, as a practical matter, it is important to integrate newly published materials into the hypertextual organization of the Web. For example, so-called "home page" documents are commonly provided on Web Servers. Home pages are akin to tables of contents or road maps, and offer information and hypertext links referencing more specific materials that are available on the home page server or elsewhere around the Web. By browsing or "visiting" home pages of interest, users of the Web can more readily identify what specific documents may be of interest to them. As new materials are published to the Web, hypertext references to the new materials should therefore be integrated into appropriate home pages.
In the Web's early days, relatively little help for Web publishing was available to ordinary users. Web publishing therefore remained the exclusive province of sophisticated Web enthusiasts and their clients. More recently, however, a number of computer-based tools to assist in the publishing process have begun to emerge. "Authoring" tools are available that assist users in constructing or converting their documents into proper html format for the Web. Other tools offer some help in completing the publishing process by copying documents into a Web server file system. For example, see PC Magazine, May 16, 1995, pp. 195-245, and pp. 205-224.
The currently available crop of tools falls short from the vantage point of naive users. Prior art tools generally impose a relatively steep, initial learning curve in which naive users must master complex, new techniques and concepts. What is truly desired is a computer-based Web publishing tool that leverages the basic user interface concepts and metaphors that are already familiar to a typical naive user. Ideally, publishing a document on the Web should be an immediately intuitive process for the user who already knows enough about personal computers to create electronic documents, and to manipulate documents by "dragging and dropping" document icons using a standard graphical user interface such as Microsoft Windows or Apple Macintosh OS, but who does not necessarily know much else about computer and network technologies.
Because of the truly explosive growth of interest in the Web among just such users, the importance of suitably intuitive tools to serve this niche of users is clear. A solution to this challenge will be equally valuable in the context of "private webs" in large organizations, i.e., secure networks that support http but that are not necessarily accessible publicly through the Internet.